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Coming from another desktop
Panama is Hyprland with a shell built to replace a GNOME session, so most of what you know still applies. The differences worth knowing on day one are below. Nothing here is a preference you have to accept: every one of them is adjustable in Settings.
Windows arrange themselves
The biggest change. You do not drag windows into position. Open a second window and the screen splits; open a third and it splits again. This is called tiling, and after a day of it, dragging windows feels like making your own bed in a hotel.
Two things follow from it:
- There is no minimise. A minimised window is a window you have hidden
from a layout that was managing it for you. Use
Super + Shift + Xto push a window to the scratchpad andSuper + Xto bring it back, which is the same idea without the layout losing track of it. - Floating still exists.
Super + Ctrl + Cmakes a window float above the layout, for the dialog that was never meant to be tiled.
Workspaces replace the taskbar
Instead of many windows on one screen, use many screens. Alt + 1 through
Alt + 0 jump straight to a workspace; Alt + Shift + 1 sends the window
you are looking at to workspace one. Super + backtick shows all of them at
once.
If you came from macOS, this is Spaces with the friction removed. If you came from Windows, it is virtual desktops that are actually worth using because switching is one key rather than three.
The launcher is the menu
There is no applications menu to browse. Super + Space opens a search box
that finds applications, files, clipboard history, emoji, and does
arithmetic. Type three letters of what you want.
This replaces the Start menu, Spotlight, the GNOME overview's app grid, and the run dialog, and it is faster than all of them because it never asks you to aim at anything.
What stayed the same
Super + Tab still switches windows. The bar is still along the top with a
clock in the middle and status on the right. There is still a dock. Volume
and brightness keys still work, and still work on the lock screen. Copy and
paste are unchanged. Your files are where you left them.
Where the settings went
Super + I opens Panama's own Settings. The sidebar is where GNOME's panels
ended up, and it is worth one read so you never have to hunt:
| If you are looking for | It is under |
|---|---|
| Themes, wallpaper, fonts, text size, titlebars | Appearance |
| The bar, the dock, Control Center, tiling, workspaces | Shell |
| Resolution, scale, arrangement, night light | Displays |
| Output and input devices, per-application volume | Sound |
| Do Not Disturb, per-application rules, focus modes | Notifications & Focus |
| Shortcuts, mouse and touchpad, dictation | Input |
| Wi-Fi and VPN, the firewall, sharing, printers | Network & Sharing |
| Default applications, autostart, gaming, Screen Intelligence | Applications |
| The accounts on this machine, and online ones | Users & Accounts |
| Permissions, saved passwords, what the machine remembers, SSH keys | Privacy & Security |
| Battery, the lid, the power button, idle and lock timings | Power & Lock |
| Magnifier, color filters, reduced motion, screen reader | Accessibility |
| Updates, storage, snapshots, date and time, backups | System |
Home is the page Super + I lands on. The search box above the sidebar
searches the settings themselves rather than the page names, so typing what you
want to change is usually faster than remembering which of those it lives in.
GNOME Settings is still installed, and Panama's Settings opens it in exactly two places: adding an online account, which has to go through the provider's own dialog, and Digital wellbeing, which is the one panel of GNOME's that does something Panama does not.